Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

I am content to remember him as my mentor, my teacher, and my guide, and latterly my friend. I have never known a time when I did not have cause to be grateful for the example he set me, the lessons he taught me, and the principles he instilled in me. The man I grew to become could never have existed or behaved as he did had it not been for the direct influence of Germanus of Auxerre. And that conviction, that certitude that he shaped and molded me to be what I was and what I am today, is the major reason why I find it so galling that I can remember so little of our time together.

Germanus grew to be a constant in my life, the dominating force behind my mental and physical growth for the seven years that followed Chulderic’s single day of tuition and enlightenment, and as in the lives of all growing boys, the majority of the mundane events and ordinary, undistinguished times in those seven years have long since been forgotten, leaving only the high points and grand events to be remembered.

As King Ban had told me he would, Germanus arrived at our gates within the month, accompanied by a small retinue, and on the night of his arrival, before dinner, King Ban summoned me to his private quarters to meet my new guardian. As I made my way to the King’s chambers, I visualized some kind of wizened cleric, stooped with piety and learning, long-bearded and wearing a high, pointed hat. It was only long months later that I realized I had been visualizing a sorcerer, the image dredged up from some half-forgotten memory of someone else’s story told over a fire on a winter’s night. The reality was radically different

“Aha, there you are. Over here, if you please.” The Lady Vivienne had just emerged from her own chamber as I entered the long suite of rooms she shared with the King, and I changed direction slightly in response to her summons, smiling and holding out my hands for the inspection I knew was coming. Smiling gently back at me, she took my hands in her own and held me out and away from her at arms’ length as she examined my appearance. Then she turned my hands over and inspected my palms before turning them back and peering closely at my fingernails, after which she released my hands and reached out to hook one finger into the front of my tunic and pull me toward her as she leaned forward to sniff at me, wrinkling her nose delicately as she did so. Then, when she had satisfied herself that I had bathed that day and was fit to present to an important guest, she nodded and ruffled my hair fondly. “You look remarkably fine, young man, clean and respectable. Are you ready to meet Bishop Germanus?”

I nodded, feeling my heart beating hard with excitement in anticipation of meeting the great man, but smiling back at her still, aware as I always was in those days of the change that had taken place in our attitudes, each to the other, since the acknowledgment that we were not mother and son, but aunt and nephew. Somehow, and quite inexplicably as far as I was concerned—and very surprisingly, too, looking back on it nowadays, since I was only ten years old at the time and demonstrating a very mature self-awareness for my age—our relationship had changed for the better within a matter of days of that admission. We had always been close and affectionate with each other in the past, but now that our true relationship had been revealed and accepted, each of us had altered our treatment and our awareness of the other very slightly and indefinably, offering and demonstrating a degree of friendliness —I could think of no other word to define it better—that had not been there in former days. The first few days after my unexpected epiphany had been painful for both of us, with neither one of us knowing what the other was thinking or expecting, and throughout those days, each time I met her, the Lady Vivienne’s eyes had been red and swollen from weeping, as, to tell the truth, had been my own. But that time had passed swiftly enough, and at the end of it she and I felt possibly more comfortable with each other than we ever had before. Once she saw that I had not grown to hate her for her necessary deceit, my aunt—although as forewarned I continued to call her Mother—had become more open and more demonstrative in her concerns for me, and in return I had taken pains to let her be aware of my unaltered love for her. Now, as these thoughts flitted through my mind, she caught a trace of them somehow and frowned at me, her face betraying slight perplexity.

“What’s wrong, Clothar? You’re not afraid, are you? Of meeting him?”

I shook my head immediately. “No, Mother, not at all. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since I heard about him.”

“Then what were you thinking a moment ago? You looked almost … distressed.”

“No,” I said and again shook my head in an emphatic negative. “Truly. I was merely thinking about all that has happened recently, but I’m not distressed at all. Can we go in now?”

She reached out and stroked my cheek gently with the back of her fingers, her eyes narrowing as she gazed intently into mine, and then she, too, nodded and tapped my cheek twice, very softly and tenderly, before crooking her finger in a sign for me to follow her as she turned away and walked ahead of me, leading me into the room where King Ban sat talking with Bishop Germanus. I followed her wordlessly, my nostrils still pleasantly aware of the perfume I had picked up from her when she leaned forward to sniff at me.

I knew the man with King Ban had to be Germanus the moment I set eyes on him because there was no one else in the room, and that was very unusual. Whenever King Ban entertained guests there were always other people around—advisers and military personnel and other dignitaries—to share the burden of amusing and engaging the visitor and to act as cushions between king and guests on those few occasions when the situation grew strained, difficult, or tiresome. No such situation, I knew, could possibly arise with Germanus, an old and much loved friend.

Ban heard us as soon as the doors swung open and he rose to his feet to greet us. His guest rose at the same time, and my first impressions of him were confusing. He was nowhere near as tall as Ban, nor was he quite as broad across the shoulders, and he was far, far older than the King, yet he struck me immediately as being by far the larger of the two men. It would be years before I encountered the concept of presence as it applied to some people, but even though I had no notion of what it was when I first saw Germanus of Auxerre, I was awestricken by my immediate awareness that here was someone larger than life. Rising to his feet beside the King, he seemed to loom over Ban, though he was neither as large as Ban was nor as magnificently dressed. He simply radiated appeal, filling the room with it and demanding the attention of anyone and everyone who entered.

He certainly claimed all my attention from the moment I set eyes on him, and I watched in open-mouthed admiration as he strode across the room to greet the Lady Vivienne, his face beaming in a wide-mouthed grin of sheer pleasure. He had no time for me at that moment; all his attention was focused tightly upon his hostess, whom he had not seen, I gathered, since his arrival. As I stared, amazed, he threw his arms about her and hugged her in a very unbishoply manner—that word, which sprang newborn into my mind as I watched him, has remained in my vocabulary ever since. Effortlessly, and despite his advanced age, he lifted her clear of the ground and spun her around, kissing her soundly on both cheeks as he told her how happy he was to see her again after so long a time. He then placed her firmly back on her feet and did much the same thing to her as she had done to me mere moments earlier: he held her out at arm’s length, her fingertips in his, in order to examine her from head to toe, and then proceeded to heap compliments and blandishments upon every aspect of her appearance, from her gown and veil to her complexion and hair. The Queen preened with pleasure and her husband the King stood smiling like a man besotted.